ABSTRACT
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, statistically at least, is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia. For the remote/accessible division mirrors, in very crude terms, two other divisions: upland and lowland and Lao Theung and Lao Soung/Lao Loum. Arguably, a distinctive feature of the Lao reform programme during its early years was the speed and intensity with which the New Economic Mechanism was introduced after 1986. History has also led the Lao leadership to view protestations of fraternal amity as short-term and liable to rapid change. Thus foreign contacts are moulded by a desire to maintain an equilibrium of relations between the countries that surround Laos. In particular, the agricultural practices of the hill-slope and mountain dwelling ‘Lao’ are regarded as both destructive and primitive, and government policy is to persuade families to abandon shifting cultivation in favour of settled agriculture - or ‘fixed engagement farming’ as it has been termed.
